Full-Spectrum Black-Box Penetration Testing

PROJECT
Full-Scope Penetration Testing on a Self-Built Vulnerable Lab
Project Objective

Design and deploy a multi-machine vulnerable network lab using VMs, conduct a complete black-box penetration test following the PTES (Penetration Testing Execution Standard) methodology, exploit real CVEs, and produce a professional penetration testing report identical to what consulting firms deliver to clients.

Project Details Table
Attribute Details
Full Title Full-Scope Black-Box Penetration Testing: Vulnerable Enterprise Network Simulation
Domain Ethical Hacking + Penetration Testing + Vulnerability Assessment
Difficulty (Advanced)
Team Size 1–2 students
Publication Scope GitHub (sanitized) + Blog writeup + TryHackMe/HTB profile
Resume Line “Designed a 5-machine vulnerable enterprise lab; conducted full-scope pentest exploiting 12 CVEs including MS17-010 and Log4Shell; delivered 60-page professional pentest report”
Tools & Technologies
Category Tools
Attacker OS Kali Linux 2024
Vulnerable Targets Metasploitable 2/3, DVWA, VulnHub VMs, custom Windows Server 2016 VM
Hypervisor VirtualBox / VMware Workstation (free)
Reconnaissance Nmap, theHarvester, Maltego CE, Shodan API
Vulnerability Scanning OpenVAS (free), Nessus Essentials (free for 16 IPs)
Exploitation Metasploit Framework, ExploitDB, custom Python exploits
Web App Testing Burp Suite Community, SQLmap, Nikto, OWASP ZAP
Post Exploitation Mimikatz, BloodHound, PowerSploit, Impacket
Password Attacks Hashcat, John the Ripper, Hydra
Reporting Dradis CE (free) / PlexTrac / MS Word
AI Assist ChatGPT / Claude for payload suggestions + report writing
Lab Architecture
Machine OS Role Vulnerabilities
Attacker Kali Linux Penetration tester machine —
Target 1 Metasploitable 2 Linux server 50+ known vulns
Target 2 Windows 7 SP1 VM Workstation MS17-010 (EternalBlue)
Target 3 DVWA on Ubuntu Web app server SQLi, XSS, CSRF, LFI
Target 4 Windows Server 2016 Active Directory DC Kerberoasting, Pass-the-Hash
Target 5 Log4j Vulnerable App Java web app Log4Shell (CVE-2021-44228)